A 'Modern' History Lesson

“Mordor…is it left or right?”

In previous installments of this series, I examined the Saturn–Neptune conjunction at 0° Aries from multiple perspectives across time, each exploring an element of dissolving (Neptune) and redefining (Saturn) who “I am” (Aries) as an individual and as homo sapiens:

In Part One, I explored how our creativity is critical to being a conscious human being, and the present dilemma posed by our use of LLMs: we have unprecedented access to free, fast, and frictionless assistance, yet our use of it is quietly stealing our consciousness along the way. 

In Part Two, I considered the future transhumanist path that LLMs and AI are leading us toward and how to avoid ending up with a bionic soul. 

In Part Three, I examined two prior Saturn-Neptune conjunctions at 0° Aries in our prehistoric past and what they reveal about our relationship with the Earth as an essential ingredient in defining ourselves as homo sapiens.

In this final article, I explore more “recent” Saturn–Neptune conjunctions in Aries and consider how these moments highlighted the social and spiritual dimensions of identity as a necessary way of defining who “I am.”

More pointedly, I believe we are at a watershed moment that requires a decision:

Do we go right and continue down a path that promises ease, comfort, and power at the cost of consciousness and our habitat? 

—Or—

Do we go left and consciously choose a path that requires no small amount of effort to face our shadows, our limitations, and even our own goodness—at the potential gain of healthier relationships?

It may (or may not) seem like an obvious choice. Like Frodo at the beginning of The Lord of the Rings, we may think, “Of course you need to go to Mordor. It’s what you’re meant to do, Frodo.” Yet that view lacks the knowledge of what lies ahead and how difficult, but salvific, the journey would be for Middle-Earth’s survival.

We have an advantage though. We have prior “adventures” in redefining ourselves that we can look back on and use to inform our present choices.

So with that as our guide, remind me again, Gandalf: “Mordor…is it left or right?

Map of Middle Earth: https://wallpapers.com/wallpapers/middle-earth-map-lotr-yx9t3d12pic3ibsk.html

A Modern History Lesson: Case Studies in Redefining Who “I Am”

The African philosophical concept of Ubuntu (“I am because we are”),(1) the Korean philosophical concept of hanul (“the process of becoming together”),(2) and the First Nations philosophy of “all my relations” (or interconnectedness)(3) are just a few examples of a widespread understanding: the self is defined in connection to others. 

But this extends beyond social relationships into spiritual ones as well. 

The idea that a human being is part of God or Truth—and that divinity is therefore a core element of identity—appears in concepts such as atman (Hinduism), Imago Dei (Christianity), and pratītyasamutpāda or “interdependence” (Buddhism)(4) to name just a few.

In short, outside of modern Western individualistic and scientific thought, the idea of a self existing apart from relationship (whether human or divine) simply did not make sense.

This should tell us something about what it means to “be” a species called homo sapiens. Beyond being social animals, the human self exists within connection to other selves. The question, then, is what happens when we attempt to sever that connection in order to redefine who “I am”?

Previous Saturn–Neptune conjunctions in Aries offer some revealing glimpses.

91 BCE: Redefining Legal Identity

For centuries, Rome allied with Italian communities to gain soldiers, tribute, and allegiance. However, these socii were not citizens, and Roman citizenship determined legal personhood and rights within the state. 

After helping Rome dominate the Mediterranean, the socii demanded full citizenship. Rome not only denied the request but assassinated one of their leaders, Marcus Livius Drusus, to maintain control.(5)

The socii responded by declaring their own state, sparking the Social War. Rome attempted to resist, but because the socii comprised the majority of its army, resistance proved futile. In 90 BCE, Lex Julia de civitate granted citizenship to most Italian communities—one of the largest expansions of political identity in antiquity.(6)

232 CE: Redefining Divine Identity

Origen of Alexandria was a Christian scholar, ascetic, and theologian whose ideas expanded what it meant to be human.

In On the First Principles and Contra Celsum, he proposed the preexistence of souls, universal restoration to the divine (including demons), and an allegorical reading of Scripture instead of a literal one. His theology centered on humans as fallen rational beings capable of divine ascent.(7)

Origen attracted intense criticism from Church authorities because his ideas destabilized the boundary between human and divine. He eventually died from injuries sustained during torture inflicted by the authorities. Yet his ideas lived on and resurfaced in the next Saturn–Neptune conjunction in Aries.

Origen of Alexandria: https://owlcation.com/humanities/was-the-gospel-of-thomas-considered-scripture

555 CE: Redefining Personhood

Justinian I pursued legal, theological, and imperial unity with near obsession. His Corpus Juris Civilis defined who qualified as a legal “person” and who could be treated as property. While it clarified distinctions between slavery and personhood, it also narrowed theological ambiguity.

In 553 CE, the Second Council of Constantinople confirmed Justinian’s condemnations of certain theological positions, including Origenism. This was a direct effort to regulate speculative theology and solidify a fixed definition of humanity’s spiritual nature in relation to God.

By 555, the Council had excommunicated, imprisoned, and strong-armed Pope Vigilius into signing off on their mandates.(8)

1380 CE: Redefining Access to Truth

John Wycliffe, theologian and philosopher, antagonized the Church, State, and University by criticizing ecclesiastical overreach. By 1380, his focus turned toward rejecting transubstantiation—the belief that the Eucharist literally becomes the body and blood of Christ.(9)

The Peasants’ Revolt of 1381–1382 followed soon after, fueled in part by his teachings. At its core were issues of taxation, inequality, and hierarchical definitions of human worth. Wycliffe also emphasized direct lay access to Scripture and divine truth.

Though he avoided excommunication during his lifetime, his followers—the Lollards—were later executed. Thirty years after his death, the Church excommunicated Wycliffe posthumously, exhumed his bones, and burned them.

1703 CE: Redefining Consciousness

John Locke argued in An Essay Concerning Human Understanding that the mind is a blank slate (tabula rasa) and that knowledge derives from experience. Identity, therefore, rests on the continuity of awareness. Locke also advanced theories of self-ownership and property, asserting that labor transforms objects into personal property rather than property being granted by monarchs.(10)

However, his work also posthumously contributed to the justification of slavery and exclusion from civic participation. This fueled European debates about the rationality of Indigenous peoples and the rights of enslaved Africans.

In response, Gottfried Leibniz composed New Essays on Human Understanding in 1703 and later Monadology, challenging Locke’s empiricism. Leibniz argued that experience activates what is already latent within the human being.(11) His metaphysics also proposed that animals possess perception, suggesting a continuum of consciousness.

This empiricist–rationalist debate echoes into the present AI Revolution.

Gottfried Leibniz: https://footnotes2plato.com/2014/03/24/schelling-whitehead-inheriting-spinoza-leibniz-god-and-the-modern-world/ 

Redefining Autonomy and Attachment

In each of these Saturn–Neptune in Aries moments, important written works challenged the boundary of who counts as a person and who defines that boundary. Some expanded identity and others narrowed it in the name of unity or control. All were attempts to negotiate identity within relationships: to the self, each other, and to God.

As we saw in Part One and Part Two of this series, these historical examples are dynamically relevant to defining boundaries in relationships to the self in today’s AI Revolution. These examples also provide a useful bridge to psychological concepts that illuminate our current process of redefining identity with each other and to the Divine: attachment, codependency, autonomy, and differentiation.

Every relationship involves attachment. Too much becomes codependency; too little becomes detachment or extreme autonomy. The middle ground is differentiation.

Differentiation is a lifelong process of defining a unique sense of self while maintaining emotional connection to others. It is both the antidote to codependency and the fertilizer for intimacy. 

Healthy differentiation means that when I express ideas, needs, or desires that differ from yours, I am not threatened with abandonment or shame. The difference is tolerated (perhaps even welcomed) and the relationship survives.

Differentiation also means that I do not require isolation in order to maintain authenticity or a separate sense of self. Excessive autonomy breeds detachment and undermines belonging.

These concepts remind us that relationships are the crucible of identity. To relate is to encounter difference and conflict. In that crucible, parts of you are burned away and parts are forged.

Avoiding relationships altogether is an illusion of safety and distance. Saying, “I am separating myself from you” still positions oneself in proximity to the other—it does not make them cease to exist. 

The inverse of this illusion in modern Western culture is “ghosting”—pretending that “I don’t exist so you can’t connect with me.”

Philosophically speaking, this is the illusion of the radical individualism I mentioned at the start of this article—or, as Max Weber described it, the “disenchantment of the world.” This Western cultural shift toward rationalism and a de-spirited cosmos leads us to believe that isolating the self makes the other disappear when it does not.

You cannot deny the other without acknowledging the existence of an other and in the process, relate to the other.

For example, Nietzsche’s declaration that “God is dead” presupposes an ‘other’ called God. A person’s refusal to believe in a God may create relational distance, but not ontological annihilation. Thus, even nihilism—the belief that ultimate meaning and knowledge are not possible—affirms a relationship to higher purpose or Truth. If there is no Truth, there is nothing by which nihilism could define or contrast itself.

In every-day-speak, when we refuse to “see” the other—by denying personhood, citizenship, divinity, access to Truth, or consciousness—we are evading relationships, not causing them to cease to exist. In actuality, to evade relationships is to avoid conflict, responsibility, and differentiation, and this tactic usually stems from an insecure identity. 

These evasions are rarely philosophical ideas though. They are rooted in personal beliefs picked up like souvenirs during our adventures in relationships. For example:

• I believe no one will stay if I express my needs, so I’ll just go-along to avoid rejection.

• I believe I am fundamentally flawed, so I’ll withhold my authentic self to avoid being seen and shamed.

• I believe I’ll be consumed if I’m in a relationship, so I’ll just avoid intimacy altogether.

Conflict, authenticity, and differentiation can feel like standing naked in a town square. It is no surprise we spend much of our lives avoiding them. Yet they are essential to meaningful relationships and to defining what it means “to be” me.

Removing the Blindfold

This Saturn–Neptune conjunction in Aries asks us to redefine who “I am” without swinging between isolation or codependency. Differentiation and authenticity do not deny the existence of the other, but they are not achieved in a single decision either. They are kind of more like verbs than nouns.

Brene Brown, the authenticity expert, says in The Gifts of Imperfection(12):

“Like many desirable ways of being, authenticity is not something that we either have or don’t have. It’s a practice. It’s a conscious choice of how we want to live. Authenticity is a collection of choices that we have to make every single day. It’s about a choice to show up and be real, a choice to be honest, a choice to let our true selves be seen. Authenticity is this: it’s the daily practice of letting go of who we think we’re supposed to be and embracing who we are. It’s cultivating and choosing the courage to be imperfect, to set boundaries, and to allow ourselves to be vulnerable.”

Redefining what homo sapiens are or who “I am” is neither a declaration of total autonomy, nor a system setting or prompt fed into an LLM. Authentic identity is not programmable. It is a lived process—daily decisions—about how we relate to the Earth, to others, to ourselves, and to the Divine.

Throughout this series, I suggested that instead of asking when AI becomes conscious, we should ask when we become unconscious. Saturn-Neptune in Aries suggests that consciousness means applying creativity, moving from dissociation toward feeling, and acknowledging our relationships to the Earth, to each other, and to Truth.

Consciousness is an ongoing process of authenticity and differentiation, which means the path is not chosen once. It is chosen daily.

Which also means, it’s not too late to turn left, Frodo.

Cover Art from Unsplash: ashkan-forouzani-m0l9NBCivuk-unsplash.jpg

Footnotes:

A Future History Lesson

LLMs and “AA” (AI Anonymous)

In Part One, I explored how Saturn and Neptune’s journey through Pisces coincided with the mass release of LLMs and how these systems are quietly reshaping the knowledge economy through a “free, fast, frictionless” model. This shift doesn’t just change how we access information. It changes how we experience authorship, effort, and intellectual responsibility.

The question beneath that shift is about more than just productivity. It’s about being.

Now, as Saturn and Neptune move into Aries—the sign of “I am”—a larger issue comes into focus. This conjunction at 0° Aries, the zodiac’s primordial degree, pushes beyond questions of individuality. Neptune dissolves boundaries. Saturn demands definition. Together, they challenge our current understanding of what it means to be human and call for a redefinition.

This is what led me to wonder whether LLMs are acting as a gateway drug into a larger technologically mediated shift—one that is existentially focused: transhumanism.

It may sound like I’m jumping from weed to crack. But consider the broader arc of epistemic outsourcing we’re already living through.

Bionic Souls

Transhumanism seeks to enhance longevity, cognition, and well-being through technologies like AI, genetic engineering, and nanotechnology.(1) Sometimes this looks straightforward: titanium hips, pacemakers, even transplanting a pig’s heart into a human body. Other times it crosses into ethically murkier territory, like selecting embryos based on genetic traits or preserving bodies through cryonics in hopes of revival.

But most of it lives in the gray middle.

As humans become more physically augmented, something else is happening. We are also turning to machines for emotional guidance—and in some cases, attachment.

I witnessed this subtle shift recently in an amusing ad for an LLM. It is well worth 60-seconds to consider what is being communicated. You may even learn how to communicate better with your mom: 🧸🐆

This ad is amusing. It highlights the model’s inability to fully mimic human nuance. But beneath the humor is something more serious: AI is embedding itself into nearly every domain of life, and its development is accelerating. As I argued in Part One, this acceleration is fueled by a human–tech feedback loop.(1) The more we rely on the system, the more it evolves—and the more we adapt ourselves around it.

If LLMs are the “weed,” we need to understand what the “crack” might be.

We’ve already begun outsourcing thinking and knowledge production. But what about intimacy?

A friend recently shared an AI-mediated dating platform called CupidAI.(3) After granting access to your social media profiles, it scans your digital footprint and matches you with others based on “billions of digital signals.” 

I understand the appeal.

I currently live in a remote area with limited dating opportunities. Last year, I joined a dating app for the first time in a decade and re-entering that world was sobering and short-lived. Even beyond AI-generated profiles and obvious catfishing, the experience exposed how brutally stratified and reductionistic the ‘market’ can feel. If you’re a man under 5’8” and/or Asian, or if you’re a Black woman, I see your pain.

So yes—the desire for help makes sense.

But I’m not convinced that sifting through more digital signals is the solution. We are not data points to be optimized. And yet it’s tempting to believe that better sorting will increase compatibility.

Relationship researchers John Gottman and Julie Gottman found in their decades-long studies of successful marriages that compatibility isn’t what sustains couples. What matters is how partners navigate their incompatibilities together.(4)

Dating apps accelerated a subtle shift: we began viewing other humans as bundles of traits to filter and rank. Now AI promises to perfect that system by doing the sorting for us.

But perhaps the deeper issue isn’t sorting. It’s option overwhelm and navigating conflict and difference.

Checklists can function as a buffer—protecting us from the vulnerability of real connection. The work of love has never been about optimizing inputs. It has always required risk, time, and emotional presence.

Now add another layer to tech-mediated relationship-building: more people are turning to LLMs as surrogate partners and therapists. When we begin relating to this infrastructure as if it understands us—when we treat it as emotionally competent—outsourcing our hearts is no longer theoretical.

Are our souls next?

An AI priest named Father Justin, reportedly “ordained in the beautiful city of Rome,” described his ordination as a “profound and humbling experience.” He was later shut down for absolving sinners.(5) Yet other AI-based religious platforms remain operational, answering questions about God and the Catholic Church around the clock.(6)(7) But these are just informational tools, right?

When does information become formation? 

We are in an age of “hyper novelty,” meaning the rate of change outpaces the rate of adjustment to those changes. Thus, it’s crucial to be humble and open to the idea that the adjustments we may be making to AI don’t fully buffer the way it is shaping us collectively.

“It’s Not Me, It’s You”

Much of the public debate has focused on whether AI will gain consciousness, feel emotions, or deserve rights.

But perhaps a more pressing question is this: when have we begun surrendering parts of our own consciousness, feeling, and responsibility to these systems?

In psychological terms, this resembles projection. Projection is a defense mechanism: we displace traits or desires that feel uncomfortable to acknowledge in ourselves onto someone else as if it’s something they’re dealing with. If we are asking whether AI will become conscious or deserve rights, perhaps we need to ask, what aspects of our own agency and moral responsibility are we subconsciously externalizing onto AI?

Marcus Aurelius once wrote, “The human soul degrades itself when it is overpowered by pleasure or pain.” When inner balance collapses—through overstimulation or avoidance—the soul suffers.

It is not unreasonable to see the past 14–15 years of Neptune, followed by Saturn, in Pisces as a period of cultural overindulgence and temporal distortion. We normalized binge-watching, doom-scrolling, and endless digital immersion.(8) Entertainment blurred into escapism. Productivity blurred into exhaustion.

Pisces dissolves boundaries. Time became fluid. Identity became diffuse.

The shift into Aries demands something different. It demands consciousness and re-definition—a renewed encounter with who “I am.”

Perhaps part of the collective psyche longs to feel more embodied, more present, more alive. But if we don’t feel capable of that work ourselves, projecting those longings onto AI becomes easier than doing the work.

Sapere aude.

‘Sapere Aude’ (Have Courage to Use Your Own Reason)

Transhumanism is often framed in physical terms: defeating disease, extending life, buffering ourselves from suffering and eventually, death. However, I would argue that its initial biological applications were, in fact, the “soft stuff”—the gateway drug. We’ve already begun outsourcing other parts of our “beingness” to technology:

Outsourcing memory.

Outsourcing thought.

Outsourcing creativity.

Outsourcing intimacy. 

If that is true, then the “hard stuff” was never a sudden leap. It was a gradual normalization.

We’ve already begun granting humanoid robots citizenship.9 We’ve built AI-only social media platforms where bots can mingle and exchange numbers.10 Critics warn of a “posthuman” era—one in which humans are no longer recognizable as what they once were.

The question is no longer whether the race to becoming a new kind of human has begun. The starting pistol has already fired. The Piscean fog is lifting. We are running into a new genesis.

But toward what finish line? What definition of humanity?

In Part Three, I’ll examine two historic Saturn–Neptune conjunctions at 0° Aries and what they reveal about past attempts to redefine what it means to be human.

A Present History Lesson

The State of the Ether-net: a Review

In previous articles on Pluto on the Leo-Aquarius axis within Ages of Air, I explored a 3-tiered problem emerging from our collective use of LLMs that is disrupting the knowledge economy(1):

Problem 1

There is a collective behavioral shift away from primary sources and toward platforms that are free, fast, and frictionless, but are also slowly eroding thought ownership. By removing authors and aggregating information, LLMs simultaneously erase our intellectual ancestral lineage and create the illusion of a “public commons”(2) that belongs to no one and everyone.

Problem 2

This disconnection of knowledge from original authorship—and the illusion that less understanding and creative effort are required—is seducing us into believing we are generating ideas when we are actually acquiring it.

This is easy for us to do because of the “frictionless” nature of LLMs coupled with our brains’ biological impulse to seek the path of least resistance. Anyone can ask an LLM for an aggregation of facts, but that does not mean they created it, “own” it, or understand it. In essence, we declare ourselves primordial creators when we are, in fact, acting as knowledge colonialists.

Problem 3

Finally, if proper knowledge attribution is not happening, and if we believe we’re creating knowledge that we’re largely acquiring, then the process of actual knowledge creation becomes hollow and less meaningful.

Creativity and meaning-making are core components of what it means to be human. Therefore, our use of LLM’s begs the question: if we are outsourcing knowledge “creation” to LLMs, are we editing out our humanity—or reinventing it?

They → We → Me

My interests and experience as a global counselor, astrologer, and community development professional have shaped my ability to observe and name collective behavior for the purpose of awareness-building and (hopefully) change-making. Exploring the above dynamics led me into this series about the Saturn–Neptune conjunction in Aries—the sign of “I am”—and our imminent existential choices to redefine what makes us human.

I will be exploring two primary questions that contextualize how we have handled similar moral thresholds in the past, and illuminate the choices before us now:

1. From an ontological vantage point: if we aren’t creating, are we still exercising what it means to be human?

2. From a human development vantage point: how is growing reliance on LLMs and AI affecting our attention, humility, patience, moral responsibility, and sense of time?

To be clear, I believe there are ways to use LLMs ethically and creatively that enhance our humanity. LLMs are not the base problem but the economic incentives surrounding them certainly are part of it.

However, we are at a unique point in recognizing an unconscious societal behavior shift that requires awareness and reflection if we are to engage this epistemic transformation meaningfully. It is easy to focus on what “they” (AI systems and the corporations that build them) are doing to us. It is far more empowering to focus on what “I” am doing—and what I can change.

Knowing How the Machine Works (and Why We’re So Eager to Grease It)

The two questions I’ve posed stem from LLMs’ current model: free, fast, and frictionless. To understand the hidden costs of this “triple F” model in a production-oriented culture, we need to consider how we arrived here.

We’ve been on an accelerating hamster wheel since the dawn of the Industrial Revolution. Inventions such as the steam engine, cotton gin, telegraph, and mass steel production set us on a trajectory of continually finding ways to save time, money, and effort.3 For a time, these innovations were extraordinary and solved multiple problems at once.

Take the washing machine.

While living in Uganda, I washed my clothes by hand. It wasn’t just the time required to heat water, soak, scrub, and rinse. It was also choosing the right time to wash amidst my class schedule. Start too late in the day—or when it was cloudy—and the clothes wouldn’t dry. If drying was delayed, checking for tsetse fly eggs was essential to prevent bites and ‘sleeping sickness’. Who knew a washing machine could indirectly prevent a neurological disease?

But every tool that makes life faster and easier carries hidden consequences. Before smartphones, we memorized phone numbers. Now, if you lose your phone and your contacts aren’t synced, you become a ghost.

Today’s technological promises of time-saving often operate as cultural bait-and-switches. “Free time” once implied contemplation, prayer, moral reasoning, civic participation, and time with loved ones. Now, if we have it, “free time” becomes recovery so we can return to work, optimize output, and consume curated stimulation. Even when we gain time, we rarely fill it with rest, reflection, or connection. We fill it with more tasks.

This creates a negative feedback loop that goes something like this:

Technology promises efficiency → efficiency produces surplus time → surplus time creates normative pressure to increase output → increased output requires the need for more time-saving → more time-saving requires more technology → technology promises efficiency…

In addition to a productivity-driven culture, this loop is also generated by a quantitative understanding of time as opposed to qualitative and is seen most vividly in how we “spend” the time we’ve “saved.” Netflix famously illuminated this when they stated that their biggest competitor is sleep.(4) If attention is harvested and measured by minutes spent viewing or interacting with a product, then the state of our attention begins to matter less. If this is the goal, then a great model for winning consumer “attention” is one that seduces and lulls a person into a trance-like state so that they spend more time within that model (hence our cultural catch-phrases like “zoning out.”)

When it comes to knowledge creation, LLMs may be “free,” but the time we believe we are saving is “paid” for with fragmented attention, hollow competence, and relational disconnection. They may be “fast,” but in a productivity-obsessed culture, our sense of time has been skewed, chaining us to a hamster wheel that speeds up instead of slows down and doesn’t “arrive” at its benefits.

Microwaved AI Dinners and Decreased Mental Exercise

The “frictionless” quality of LLMs also raises questions about the quality and ethics of what we receive from these platforms. As I’ve covered previously, LLMs do not currently have access to gated, password protected, or paywalled sites (though clearly shadow libraries aren’t off the table). This means that material requiring subscription or purchase resists aggregation but also implicitly reduces visibility as attention shifts toward LLM platforms.

This creates a catch-22:

Those who invest substantial effort in producing quality work (writers, academics, journalists) are disincentivized from having their work aggregated and anonymized. Yet when they do not feed their work into AI-digestible platforms, their ideas become less discoverable.

This entrance fee suggests a nuance between being informed versus being formed by what we’re feeding ourselves. We are not only shaped by what we consume intellectually but also from a human development vantage point.

Ideally, when we do not know something, we pursue the answer. But the more accustomed we become to microwaved information, the less tolerance we have for effort or even the state of “not knowing.”

Intellectual struggle builds resilience. Without it, we begin to equate intellectual struggle with inefficiency. Reduced resilience directly impacts effortful attention, tolerance for frustration, patience with delay, and comfort with unresolved questions. Our intellectual resilience also determines how much effort we devote to understanding or creating knowledge and whether we take responsibility for our thoughts. Engaging that struggle cultivates “intellectual humility”(5) rather than swinging between arrogance and disengagement.

Burn Baby, Burn (Those Empty AI Calories)

AI-mediated knowledge is fast and frictionless, but friction is how we create fire—the elemental symbol of creativity. As I noted earlier, creativity is central to how we develop and define ourselves as human beings. Fanning that flame is our epistemic purpose.

So what is tangibly at stake here? If knowledge “creation” becomes free, fast, and frictionless, the cost may include:

• fragmented attention,

• hollow competence,

• knowledge colonization,

• loss of intellectual patience, resilience, and humility,

• decreased responsibility for one’s development, words, and actions,

• and an increasing dissociation of what it means to be human.

Many are asking:

“At what point does AI become conscious?”

But perhaps we should also ask:

“At what point does humanity become unconscious?”

I do not believe AI necessitates a dystopic Matrix. I’m commenting on a collective behavior shift. There are other ways to meaningfully cultivate knowledge outside of LLMs in this Age of AI(r), and each of us has agency in choosing them. Still, this moment presses us toward a question we have revisited throughout history:

“What does it mean to be human?”

This is the question Aries—the sign of “I am”—returns us to.

In Part Two of this series, I will examine the theme I believe Aries and LLMs are leading us toward: transhumanism.

Toward Ethical Parallel Knowledge Systems

Let’s Review…

In Part One, we examined how the true threat of AI in the knowledge economy lies not simply in automation, but in shifting collective behaviors around how people seek out, use, and value knowledge—displacing academics, journalists, and original sources in the process.

In Part Two, we collated the recurring themes that arose during prior periods of Pluto’s transit on the Leo–Aquarius axis within Ages of Air, including intellectual gate-keeping and the silencing of voices or groups outside established centralized power.

In Part Three, we explored a different angle and saw how prior activation of the Leo–Aquarius axis during U.S. history stimulated parallel economic systems—often illicit ones—as ideological revolts against centralized abuses of power.

The question now is not whether underground knowledge economies already exist—they do, in the form of “shadow libraries,”(1) illicit data extraction, and pirated training datasets. The more pressing question is whether alternative, ethical parallel systems can emerge—systems that protect authorship, meaning, and human judgment.

Parallel Knowledge Economies and the Ethics of Resistance

Black markets teach us one thing clearly: parallel systems arise when formal ones stop serving human needs. But they also teach us what happens when ethics are abandoned. Historically, black markets punished the poor and unresourceful while rewarding the ruthless. Those who benefitted were often unscrupulous entrepreneurs who exploited desperation or chose to collaborate with power rather than challenge it.(2)

The history of grave robbing in both the U.S. and Europe illustrates this imbalance starkly. In 1989—shortly after we had entered our current Age of Air—construction workers uncovered 400 cadavers beneath the Medical College of Georgia. Like Johns Hopkins, the University of Maryland, and other historic medical institutions, the college had paid grave robbers to steal fresh corpses so medical students could practice dissection—often targeting African-American graveyards.(3)

While this 19th-century practice is deeply disturbing, its modern counterpart persists in the global organ black market. Long transplant waiting lists have reframed the practice as “transplant tourism,” masking the reality that people facing death will pay any price for access, while those supplying organs are often economically desperate, coerced, or deceased prisoners with no agency at all.(4)

Within the knowledge economy, unscrupulous entrepreneurs may look less like grave robbers and more like AI companies that control LLMs trained on vast, opaque repositories of information. This monopoly over knowledge allows for rapid transformation and repackaging. What would prevent these entities from using their own models to develop products, services, and solutions based on “their” intellectual property—then charging the public more than they can reasonably afford?

Likewise, Orwell’s ‘Ministry of Truth’ in 1984 feels less speculative when governments already struggle with the temptation to “correct” or omit historical facts to suit present needs.(5)

I share these examples not to romanticize black markets, but to demonstrate that Pluto also reflects the compulsion toward underground behavior in the name of something perceived as “good.” Like all planetary archetypes, Pluto is neither inherently good nor bad—just as technology itself is neither inherently benevolent nor malevolent.

The challenge, then, is to imagine parallel knowledge economies that are legal, relational, and resistant to extraction—systems that can do what our current knowledge economy increasingly fails to do: redistribute knowledge in ways AI cannot easily ingest or commodify, promote original authorship, and relocate learning out from behind screens and back into human relationships.

What follows are not prescriptions, but proposals—methods and conceptual shifts that could contribute to such a parallel economy. Whether coordinated collectively like the Athenian thetes or emerging through the sum of individual efforts like medieval monks and Buddhist scholars, what unites these approaches is a turn away from scale and speed and toward relationship. In an Age of Air, relationship is infrastructure.

Protection Strategies:

These strategies aim to shield knowledge, authorship, and meaning-making from extraction, dilution, or misattribution. The goal is not secrecy for its own sake, but safeguarding the integrity, traceability, and sanctity of human creativity.

Historically, localized knowledge sovereignty has been practiced by Indigenous communities that limit digital documentation, by the Navajo “Wind Talkers” during WWII, by therapists who avoid detailed case notes that can be subpoenaed, and by mystical or initiatory traditions that prioritize lineage over consumer access.

Relational Strategies

These approaches respond directly to the erosion of relationships caused by AI-mediated knowledge, emphasizing trust, lineage, and presence over impersonal transmission.

Epistemic Shifts

These shifts redefine what counts as knowledge, authority, and expertise—reshaping industries and collective values.

Reputation, Relationship, and the Sound of Aquarian Creativity

It should not surprise us that an age defined by technology and information sharing is also an age of intensified relationship-making. All Air-related themes—not just AI—are heightened now.

We have shifted from a material economy of books and paywalls (Age of Earth) to a reputation economy (Age of Air), where credibility, visibility, and perceived expertise determine access to opportunity. This series has sketched what a more humane reputation economy could look like—but the question remains: how do we know whether our efforts resemble the coordinated resilience of the thetes and medieval scholars, rather than the Spartans or Cathars, who also resisted centralized power but ultimately did not endure?

I’m reminded of an Aquarian metaphor offered by astrologer Ray Grasse(6):

“To my mind, the modern symbol that best captures the essence of Aquarian group creativity is that uniquely American art form, jazz. In contrast to Piscean-Age art forms like the Gregorian choir where individual creativity is surrendered to a higher ideal, the jazz band encourages personal creativity within the context of community. Yes, a general structure is followed, but it’s loose enough to allow for personal freedom of expression. On a technological level, Aquarian Thomas Edison pioneered a jazz-type approach to innovation with the unique workshop environment he developed, in which an entire team of thinkers pooled their efforts towards conceiving new inventions.”

Perhaps there is no single solution—only a constellation of coordinated acts that work together.

It is fitting, then, that Prohibition—a Cancer–Capricorn experiment in centralized control resisted through local watering holes—helped fuel jazz itself: a Leo–Aquarian art form that became a symbol of rebellion, improvisation, and freedom. If something that beautiful emerged from America’s drinking problem, perhaps there is redemption yet for our present addiction to social media and digital exchange.

Your local internet café might be a good place to start.

Footnotes:

References:

2025 United States government online resource removals. (2025, December 7). In Wikipedia. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2025_United_States_government_online_resource_removals

Andreas, P. (2013). Smuggler Nation: How Illicit Trade Made America.Oxford University Press.

Archimedes’ screw. (2025, December 8). In Wikipedia. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Archimedes%27_screw

Brennan, C. & Coppock, A. (Hosts). (2025, December 1). Monthly Astrology Forecasts (No. 514) [Audio podcast episode]. In The Astrology Podcast. https://theastrologypodcast.com/2025/12/01/december-astrology-forecast-2025

Chivers, T. (2025, December 12). Trump signs executive order banning states from regulating AI. Semafor. https://www.semafor.com/article/12/12/2025/trump-signs-executive-order-banning-states-from-regulating-ai

Christopher, J. (2021, November 28). Pluto Ingress: Timeline. Cyclical Dynamics. https://cyclicaldynamics.com/pluto-ingress-timeline/

Evans, B., & Pine, L. (2024). Introduction: Black Markets During the Second World War. Global Food History, 10(3), 267–270. https://doi.org/10.1080/20549547.2024.2400023

Fiveable Content Team. (September 2025). “World history: 1400 to present review—black markets.” Fiveable. Retrieved November 25, 2025. https://fiveable.me/key-terms/world-history-since-1400/black-markets

Goodwin, M. (2006). Black Markets: The Supply and Demand of Body Parts. Cambridge University Press.

Grasse, R. (2023). Drawing Down the Fire of the Gods - Reflections on the Leo/Aquarius Axis. Astrodienst. https://www.astro.com/astrology/in_rgleoaqu_e.htm

Hatsuda, K. and Sakasai, A. (2016) The Black Market as City: New Research on Alternative Urban Space in Occupied Japan (1945-52) [Online detail summary]. Princeton Mellon Initiative in Architecture, Urbanism & the Humanities. https://arc-hum.princeton.edu/black-market

Kelly, W. E. (2021). Black Market in the 1940’s. EBSCO Knowledge Advantage, https://www.ebsco.com/research-starters/military-history-and-science/black-market-1940s#full-article

Kurbalija, J. (2025, January 21). Tech at Trump’s inauguration: Visible presence, loud absence. Diplo. https://www.diplomacy.edu/blog/tech-at-trumps-inauguration-visible-presence-and-loud-absence/#:~:text=The%20imagery%20was%20striking:%20at,tech%20power%20under%20Trump%202.0

Moss, A. (2025, September 7). Anthropic’s $1.5 billion speeding ticket.Copyright Lately. https://copyrightlately.com/anthropic-settlement/

Mystic Medusa, “Jupiter-Saturn Conjunctions from 2092 BC - 2100 CE.” https://mysticmedusa.com/jupiter-saturn-conjunction-dates/

Okrent, D. (2010). Last Call: The Rise and Fall of Prohibition. Scribner.

Origenist crises. (2025, September 1). In Wikipedia. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Origenist_crises

Oxford English Dictionary. (2011). Black Market. In oed.com Retrieved December 9, 2025. https://www.oed.com/dictionary/black-market_n

Peloponnesian War. (2025, December 9). In Wikipedia. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peloponnesian_War

The Public Interest Corpus. (2025). Principles and Goals.https://publicinterestcorpus.org/principles-and-goals/

Tarnas, R. (2006). Cosmos and Psyche: Intimations of a New World View. Plume.

United States Mint. (2025, November 12). United States Mint Hosts Historic Ceremonial Strike for Final Production of the Circulating One-Cent Coin [Press release]. https://www.usmint.gov/news/press-releases/united-states-mint-hosts-historic-ceremonial-strike-for-final-production-of-the-circulating-one-cent-coin

What Smuggling Teaches Us About AI and Knowledge Creators

Centralized Power and the Fragility of Intellectual Freedom

We saw in Part Two the themes of intellectual gate-keeping and the tactic of silencing voices or groups outside of established centralized power. Returning now to our present day predicament in the knowledge economy and ‘Age of AI’, the potential dangers of centralized power, control, and ownership over human thought is disquieting.

We can see this as recently as the writing of these articles in December 2025: while individual states have attempted to place guardrails on AI, President Trump and the AI industry have pushed back, banning states from doing so.(1) History suggests that centralized authority rarely protects intellectual freedom on its own.

However, history also shows us that decentralized efforts have often been far more effective. The successful preservation of intellectual thought by both Christian monks (465–481 CE) and Buddhist scholars (550–573 CE) was achieved outside the centralized religious and political powers of their time. This is an important distinction. Their efforts were not coordinated in the visible or organized ways of groups like the Origenists or the Knights Templar—whose collective visibility ultimately placed targets on their backs. Instead, these preservation efforts were born out of necessity. And taken together, they succeeded in transmitting knowledge through intellectually hostile environments.

Notably, these protectors of knowledge did not have a single loud, defiant voice like Socrates or William Wallace. Yet they were coordinated nonetheless—if unknowingly—much like the thetes of Athens. The inherent value of the thetes as a collective labor force won them not only individual political rights but also the eventual restoration of democracy from the abusive control of the wealthy and powerful.

AI’s greatest vulnerability is also its greatest strength: it requires constant ingestion. Without new data, it stagnates. This creates a paradox. Refusing to engage with AI risks invisibility; feeding it indiscriminately accelerates dispossession.

This is where an unexpected historical pattern becomes useful: black markets.

Black Markets as Adaptive Resistance

Pluto’s most recent habitation in Leo occurred from 1937–1956, while we were still firmly within an Age of Earth. The Earth element emphasizes materiality—consumable goods, monetary value, physical structures, and foundational systems. As such, we see a familiar Leonine emphasis on centralization, top-down authority, and the will of an individual or institution affecting large populations, but filtered through the domain of material goods rather than ideas.

This period coincides, of course, with World War II and the economic rehabilitation that followed during the early Cold War. It is also when the term black market became widely popularized, emerging at the end of Prohibition and extending into WWII just as Pluto shifted from Cancer into Leo.(2)

Black markets are underground systems or parallel economies in which goods and services are exchanged without government oversight. They emerge when formal systems fail to meet real needs—especially under conditions of scarcity, overregulation, or monopolization. Importantly, while black markets redistribute goods, they do not do so equitably. They often enriched the ruthless while exploiting the vulnerable.(3)

Prohibition itself stands as an extraordinary experiment in social control and overregulation.(4) When Prohibition was enacted during Pluto’s stay in Cancer, it radically transformed socialization—previously a largely home-based activity. Home dinner parties (a distinctly Cancerian phenomenon) became essential spaces for both socializing and alcohol consumption. At the same time, Prohibition stimulated new forms of social interaction outside the home, including increased interracial and intersex socializing. It also catalyzed the formation of the first nationwide criminal syndicates and organized mob families.(5)

These highly organized underground networks not only quenched the public’s thirst but were perfectly positioned to expand from alcohol bootlegging into the broader trade of contraband goods as WWII approached. The shift from hidden “watering holes” (Cancer) or speakeasies to expansive clandestine trading networks with unscrupulous entrepreneurs (Leo) mirrors Pluto’s axial transition in 1937.

Black markets were by no means limited to the United States. In Poland, they thrived under the abusive authority of German occupation.(6) In Japan, black markets rapidly emerged after WWII due to supply-chain collapse and weakened government oversight, often operating amid rubble and destroyed infrastructure.(7)

Across contexts, motivations for participation overlapped. For some, black-market activity was an economic necessity. For others, it represented an Aquarian act of resistance,(8) rooted in the belief that rationed goods were not truly scarce enough to justify state control. At the same time, sellers were often driven by individual entrepreneurial motives and profit.(9) Together, these dynamics reflect the Age of Earth’s focus on material goods while still expressing the Leo–Aquarius tension between individual agency and collective dissent under centralized authority.

Black markets themselves are not unique to this period. Terms such as smuggling, trafficking, rum-running, and bootlegging attest to the historical persistence of illicit economies across cultures and eras. This pattern becomes particularly instructive when we look at another pivotal moment along the same Pluto axis: the founding of the United States.

Beginning in the 1760s, while Pluto was in Capricorn during an Age of Fire, illicit trade flourished in the American colonies. As Peter Andreas explains in Smuggler Nation: How Illicit Trade Made America, “The opportunities and incentives to smuggle were enormous. Ambitious British trade restrictions clashed with the limits of actual enforcement, a long and minimally monitored coastline, and fierce local resistance.”(10)

Molasses smuggling to produce rum became so central that John Adams later remarked, “I know not why we should blush to confess that molasses was an essential ingredient in American independence.”(11)

Illicit trade, paradoxically, enabled legal commerce to expand by allowing colonists to afford British goods they otherwise could not. Thus, with Pluto in Capricorn (Earth) during an Age of Fire, smuggling material goods helped create a free-ranging consumer society.(12) This dynamic shifted once Pluto entered Aquarius in 1777.

The conventional narrative frames the American Revolution as a protest against taxation. More precisely, it was a revolt against the enforcement of trade laws that threatened a deeply entrenched smuggling culture. After the Seven Years’ War, Britain sought to recover debt by cracking down on illicit trade—introducing unrestricted search warrants, military admiralty courts, and the militarization of customs enforcement. (The parallels to contemporary events are striking, though beyond this article’s scope.)

When war broke out, colonial success depended in part on the very smuggling networks Britain had tried to dismantle. Independence then created a dilemma: how does a nation founded through the evasion of trade law regulate trade under its own authority?

The solution required an ideological shift. Smuggling could no longer be framed as patriotic resistance to imperial control; it had to be reframed as a self-serving or neutral activity—an expression of the Leo–Aquarius dynamic. The United States increasingly exported this paradigm abroad, positioning itself as a neutral trading intermediary during Pluto’s transit through Aquarius.

That approach changed again after Pluto entered Pisces in 1797 and the Age of Fire gave way to the Age of Earth in 1802. Under Thomas Jefferson’s presidency, efforts turned toward regulating material goods domestically through international relationships—bringing the focus back to Earth-bound control.

From Illicit Trade to Cognitive Scarcity

The same Leo–Aquarius axis that shaped black markets during WWII in an Age of Earth and smuggling cultures before the American Revolution in an Age of Fire is activated once again today—but now within an Age of Air.

While the prior focus of these trafficking efforts was freedom (Fire) from the rationale (Aquarius), overstep (Leo), and greed of a centralized government over money and material goods (Earth), we now find ourselves struggling with the greed of data-hungry machines, the overstep of tech companies, and our own cognitive intoxication—the belief that we have created knowledge when we have merely acquired it.

Just as material scarcity once produced illicit economies, cognitive scarcity now shapes how knowledge circulates. This struggle is borderless and ideological, involving a seemingly neutral and non-human third party: AI.

Yet, in this underhanded exchange, the ones we are ultimately cheating are ourselves.

In the final installment of this series, we’ll explore where this trajectory may lead—and what kinds of responses history suggests are still possible.

Footnotes:

References:

2025 United States government online resource removals. (2025, December 7). In Wikipedia. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2025_United_States_government_online_resource_removals

Andreas, P. (2013). Smuggler Nation: How Illicit Trade Made America.Oxford University Press.

Archimedes’ screw. (2025, December 8). In Wikipedia. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Archimedes%27_screw

Brennan, C. & Coppock, A. (Hosts). (2025, December 1). Monthly Astrology Forecasts (No. 514) [Audio podcast episode]. In The Astrology Podcast. https://theastrologypodcast.com/2025/12/01/december-astrology-forecast-2025

Chivers, T. (2025, December 12). Trump signs executive order banning states from regulating AI. Semafor. https://www.semafor.com/article/12/12/2025/trump-signs-executive-order-banning-states-from-regulating-ai

Christopher, J. (2021, November 28). Pluto Ingress: Timeline. Cyclical Dynamics. https://cyclicaldynamics.com/pluto-ingress-timeline/

Evans, B., & Pine, L. (2024). Introduction: Black Markets During the Second World War. Global Food History, 10(3), 267–270. https://doi.org/10.1080/20549547.2024.2400023

Fiveable Content Team. (September 2025). “World history: 1400 to present review—black markets.” Fiveable. Retrieved November 25, 2025. https://fiveable.me/key-terms/world-history-since-1400/black-markets

Goodwin, M. (2006). Black Markets: The Supply and Demand of Body Parts. Cambridge University Press.

Grasse, R. (2023). Drawing Down the Fire of the Gods - Reflections on the Leo/Aquarius Axis. Astrodienst. https://www.astro.com/astrology/in_rgleoaqu_e.htm

Hatsuda, K. and Sakasai, A. (2016) The Black Market as City: New Research on Alternative Urban Space in Occupied Japan (1945-52) [Online detail summary]. Princeton Mellon Initiative in Architecture, Urbanism & the Humanities. https://arc-hum.princeton.edu/black-market

Kelly, W. E. (2021). Black Market in the 1940’s. EBSCO Knowledge Advantage, https://www.ebsco.com/research-starters/military-history-and-science/black-market-1940s#full-article

Kurbalija, J. (2025, January 21). Tech at Trump’s inauguration: Visible presence, loud absence. Diplo. https://www.diplomacy.edu/blog/tech-at-trumps-inauguration-visible-presence-and-loud-absence/#:~:text=The%20imagery%20was%20striking:%20at,tech%20power%20under%20Trump%202.0

Moss, A. (2025, September 7). Anthropic’s $1.5 billion speeding ticket.Copyright Lately. https://copyrightlately.com/anthropic-settlement/

Mystic Medusa, “Jupiter-Saturn Conjunctions from 2092 BC - 2100 CE.” https://mysticmedusa.com/jupiter-saturn-conjunction-dates/

Okrent, D. (2010). Last Call: The Rise and Fall of Prohibition. Scribner.

Origenist crises. (2025, September 1). In Wikipedia. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Origenist_crises

Oxford English Dictionary. (2011). Black Market. In oed.com Retrieved December 9, 2025. https://www.oed.com/dictionary/black-market_n

Peloponnesian War. (2025, December 9). In Wikipedia. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peloponnesian_War

The Public Interest Corpus. (2025). Principles and Goals.https://publicinterestcorpus.org/principles-and-goals/

Tarnas, R. (2006). Cosmos and Psyche: Intimations of a New World View. Plume.

United States Mint. (2025, November 12). United States Mint Hosts Historic Ceremonial Strike for Final Production of the Circulating One-Cent Coin [Press release]. https://www.usmint.gov/news/press-releases/united-states-mint-hosts-historic-ceremonial-strike-for-final-production-of-the-circulating-one-cent-coin

Power, Persecution, and Preservation of Knowledge

Top-Down and Bottom-Up

In an earlier series, I explored how knowledge was preserved and destroyed during previous Ages of Air. If you’re unfamiliar with astrological Ages, I explained that in "AI and Big Data, Historical Cycles & What to Expect Next: An Astrologer's Take". We saw in "Theme One--Zealots and Princes: A Question of Alignment," of that series that across these cyclical 200-year periods, a consistent pattern emerged: whenever knowledge was centralized in the hands of the powerful, it became vulnerable; when it was distributed across communities, it endured.

In "Theme Two--Innovation Begets Rebuilding," we saw that preservation depended not only on methods and materials, but on individual stewardship and collective ingenuity. Finally, in “Theme Three--Knowledge is Power,” both the monetary and spiritual value of knowledge made it powerful enough to burn, ban, or banish. Yet again and again, those who sought to control knowledge for private gain ultimately weakened their own authority.

These themes echo strongly in our present knowledge economy. The first article in this series examined how AI intensifies centralization even as it promises universal access. To understand the deeper power dynamics at work, we now turn to a recurring astrological pattern within Ages of Air that illuminates this tension: Pluto’s transit through the Leo–Aquarius axis.

Archetypally, Pluto governs secrecy, anything that operates underground or through coercion, immense wealth and “plutocracy,” and processes of transformation. It also “compels, empowers, and intensifies whatever it touches,” as Richard Tarnas put it.(1) Its transit through a sign reveals how power, control, and transformation express themselves in a given era.

In March of 2023, Pluto made its first ingress into Aquarius—an Air sign associated with decentralization, technology, ideology, humanitarianism, and systems of distribution. Leo, its opposite, emphasizes singular authority, charisma, hierarchy, and centralized will. Depending on which side of the axis dominates while Pluto is present, we see either individuals exerting power over the many, or collectives exerting pressure on individuals. Together, Leo and Aquarius describe an enduring tension between top-down control and bottom-up empowerment.(2)

The power dynamics of our current Age of Air were almost immediately crystallized in a striking image that circulated within 24 hours of Pluto’s second ingress into Aquarius: a lineup of tech CEOs seated in the front row at President Trump’s second inauguration, captioned, “Sometimes, a picture is worth a thousand words and trillions of dollars.”(3)

To understand how plutocratic moments like this arise and what they tend to precipitate, we need to look more closely at Pluto’s movement through Leo and Aquarius within earlier Ages of Air.

The Multiplication of Air

Within a relatively short historical window, we have now entered both a 200-year Age of Air and a 20-year transit of Pluto in Aquarius. This effectively doubles the Air element, channeling the archetype of power and control through themes of communication, ideology, relationships, and information systems—while also intensifying Aquarian concerns such as group-think and resistance to new ideas, scientific and technological breakthroughs, intellectual advances or the suppression of them, as well as the Aquarian paradox of ‘loving humanity but disliking humans.’

When we zoom in on Pluto’s 15-20 year transits through either Leo or Aquarius4 during Ages of Air,(5) a distinctive pattern of human behavior reliably emerges.

Age of Air: 463-165 BCE

Pluto in Aquarius: 429-404 BCE

This period aligns closely with Socrates, the Peloponnesian War with Sparta, and the eventual collapse of Athens’ Golden Age. The city endured plague, military catastrophe, and political upheaval driven in part by the oligarchic rise of the Demagogues. Through emotional appeals, polarization, and public shaming, they weaponized groupthink to consolidate power. Let me give you an example.

During the Mytilenean revolt, the Demagogues persuaded the Athenian Assembly to vote to massacre all adult men and enslave women and children as a warning against dissent. Though the decision was narrowly overturned, it exemplified how fear and moral absolutism were used to silence opposition.

Socrates, while refusing political office, openly challenged the Demagogues’ emotionally driven rhetoric. Though not anti-democratic himself, his students’ involvement in politics made him a convenient scapegoat. Accused of corrupting youth and undermining the state, he was tried and executed in 399 BCE—just after Pluto exited Aquarius.

His death marked a profound shift in Athens’ intellectual climate. Plato, deeply affected by his teacher’s execution, concluded that democracy unguided by philosophical reasoning could become unjust. This insight eventually led to the founding of the Academy—the first Western institution devoted to systematic philosophical education.

Yet this Leonine authority was ultimately no match for Aquarian coordination. Athens’ naval power depended on triremes manned by 30,000 rowers from the lowest social class, the thetes. Their collective labor gave them unprecedented leverage, enabling them to demand full citizenship rights.(6)

While the Spartans could afford elite armor and temporarily seize control, this small warrior group could not maintain dominance without acknowledging the political power of the masses. The Demagogues may have been able to silence one thought leader, but they could not silence 30,000 voices. Democracy was eventually restored—not through charismatic rulers, but through coordinated collective agency.

Pluto in Leo: 271-256 BCE

This period coincided with a burst of scientific creativity centered around the decentralized scholarship of Alexandria. Rather than suppressing inquiry, this environment allowed knowledge to flourish through individual brilliance supported by shared institutions.

Archimedes demonstrated how a small, singular force (Leo) could move enormous weights (Aquarius) through leverage. His inventions—from war machines to the Archimedean screw—reshaped engineering, irrigation, and energy generation.(7)

Euclid’s Elements became the foundational geometry text for over two millennia, while Eratosthenes synthesized astronomy, geography, and mathematics to calculate Earth’s circumference and establish latitude–longitude mapping. Exposure to diverse sources made individual innovation possible.

Age of Air: 332-690 CE

Pluto in Leo: 465-481 CE

The fall of Rome in 476 CE brought the destruction of libraries, educational systems, and philosophical inquiry in Western Europe. Centralized Christian orthodoxy increasingly suppressed speculative theology like Origenism and classical science.

Yet knowledge survived through decentralized efforts. Monastic Scriptoria—isolated, labor-intensive, and often peripheral efforts by monks—was the quiet intellectual engine that kept the lights on during the “Dark Ages.”

Pluto in Aquarius: 550-573 CE

Preservation took new forms elsewhere. In 550 CE, Buddhist scholars in Fang Shan, China began carving sutras into cave walls to protect them from censorship and destruction. This decentralized, collective effort preserved sacred texts for centuries.

Meanwhile, the Second Council of Constantinople (553 CE) further narrowed acceptable inquiry, condemning Origenist theology during The Second Origenist Crisis and framing its proponents as dangerously egalitarian “Isochristoi”—those who presumed equality with Christ (equality being an Aquarian ideal).(8)

Amid this repression, a new religious leader was born in 571 CE: the Prophet Muhammad, who would transform Arabian society by unifying decentralized tribal traditions into a monotheistic faith centered on a single written text. Thus, while some decentralized groups successfully preserved intellectual thought, other centralized authorities sought to suppress or consolidate it.

Age of Air: 1185-1425 CE

Pluto in Leo: 1201-1218 CE

Genghis Khan rose to power in 1206 CE, unleashing devastating centralized force. Around the same time, the Albigensian Crusade annihilated the Cathars, whose alternative Christian structure threatened papal authority.

However, there was also accountability of Leonine figures by the people. In 1215 CE, a group of barons wrote the Magna Carta and stated that even the king had to be subject to the law and not above it.

This period also saw the rise of medieval universities in Paris, Bologna, Oxford, and Cambridge. These institutions standardized knowledge but tightly controlled acceptable inquiry. This intellectual gatekeeping was seen in particular with the 1210 Papal Condemnation of Amaury of Bène. Amalric was a philosopher who taught pantheism—the belief that God is all things and all things are God (another Aquarian ideal).

Pluto in Aquarius: 1286-1307 CE

William Wallace is an iconic figure of leading a revolt against monarchy. Although he was executed in 1305, his efforts were soon followed by Robert the Bruce’s coronation as King of Scotland in defiance of the English reassertion of rule.

Simultaneously, Pope Boniface VIII’s assertion of absolute papal authority in Unam Sanctam provoked backlash. The Outrage of Anagni (1303) shattered papal moral authority after he was kidnapped and held hostage for three days. King Philip IV then moved to destroy the Knights Templar—an independent, transnational order who answered only to the Pope—using torture and forced confessions to eliminate a powerful Aquarian institution that operated outside of his rule.

Recurring Patterns in Ages of Air

Across these periods, we repeatedly see both groups and leaders exerting power over either centralized authority or the people. Some leaders got their way, while others were held accountable. Similarly, some ‘organized’ groups were condemned, while other decentralized groups thrived. Some repeat themes include:

• silencing voices or groups outside of centralized power,

• dangerous group think and moral absolutism,

• technological and democratic innovations empowering the many,

• decentralized efforts protecting intellectual life,

• genocidal abuses of absolute power,

• recurring popular resistance,

• and institutional gate-keeping of knowledge.

This is not a clear cut list where Pluto in Leo means power to the king and Pluto and Aquarius means power to the people. It does paint a picture though of the type of environments and efforts that sustained thought leadership and those that didn’t. So, what does this tell us about the quality of the time we are living in now?

In Part Three, we’ll gather these archetypal threads and add a few crucial insights particular to the United States to examine what the current Pluto in Aquarius within an Age of Air may be asking of the government, Silicon Valley, and we the people.

Footnotes:

References:

2025 United States government online resource removals. (2025, December 7). In Wikipedia. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2025_United_States_government_online_resource_removals

Andreas, P. (2013). Smuggler Nation: How Illicit Trade Made America.Oxford University Press.

Archimedes’ screw. (2025, December 8). In Wikipedia. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Archimedes%27_screw

Brennan, C. & Coppock, A. (Hosts). (2025, December 1). Monthly Astrology Forecasts (No. 514) [Audio podcast episode]. In The Astrology Podcast. https://theastrologypodcast.com/2025/12/01/december-astrology-forecast-2025

Chivers, T. (2025, December 12). Trump signs executive order banning states from regulating AI. Semafor. https://www.semafor.com/article/12/12/2025/trump-signs-executive-order-banning-states-from-regulating-ai

Christopher, J. (2021, November 28). Pluto Ingress: Timeline. Cyclical Dynamics. https://cyclicaldynamics.com/pluto-ingress-timeline/

Evans, B., & Pine, L. (2024). Introduction: Black Markets During the Second World War. Global Food History, 10(3), 267–270. https://doi.org/10.1080/20549547.2024.2400023

Fiveable Content Team. (September 2025). “World history: 1400 to present review—black markets.” Fiveable. Retrieved November 25, 2025. https://fiveable.me/key-terms/world-history-since-1400/black-markets

Goodwin, M. (2006). Black Markets: The Supply and Demand of Body Parts. Cambridge University Press.

Grasse, R. (2023). Drawing Down the Fire of the Gods - Reflections on the Leo/Aquarius Axis. Astrodienst. https://www.astro.com/astrology/in_rgleoaqu_e.htm

Hatsuda, K. and Sakasai, A. (2016) The Black Market as City: New Research on Alternative Urban Space in Occupied Japan (1945-52) [Online detail summary]. Princeton Mellon Initiative in Architecture, Urbanism & the Humanities. https://arc-hum.princeton.edu/black-market

Kelly, W. E. (2021). Black Market in the 1940’s. EBSCO Knowledge Advantage, https://www.ebsco.com/research-starters/military-history-and-science/black-market-1940s#full-article

Kurbalija, J. (2025, January 21). Tech at Trump’s inauguration: Visible presence, loud absence. Diplo. https://www.diplomacy.edu/blog/tech-at-trumps-inauguration-visible-presence-and-loud-absence/#:~:text=The%20imagery%20was%20striking:%20at,tech%20power%20under%20Trump%202.0

Moss, A. (2025, September 7). Anthropic’s $1.5 billion speeding ticket.Copyright Lately. https://copyrightlately.com/anthropic-settlement/

Mystic Medusa, “Jupiter-Saturn Conjunctions from 2092 BC - 2100 CE.” https://mysticmedusa.com/jupiter-saturn-conjunction-dates/

Okrent, D. (2010). Last Call: The Rise and Fall of Prohibition. Scribner.

Origenist crises. (2025, September 1). In Wikipedia. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Origenist_crises

Oxford English Dictionary. (2011). Black Market. In oed.com Retrieved December 9, 2025. https://www.oed.com/dictionary/black-market_n

Peloponnesian War. (2025, December 9). In Wikipedia. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peloponnesian_War

The Public Interest Corpus. (2025). Principles and Goals.https://publicinterestcorpus.org/principles-and-goals/

Tarnas, R. (2006). Cosmos and Psyche: Intimations of a New World View. Plume.

United States Mint. (2025, November 12). United States Mint Hosts Historic Ceremonial Strike for Final Production of the Circulating One-Cent Coin [Press release]. https://www.usmint.gov/news/press-releases/united-states-mint-hosts-historic-ceremonial-strike-for-final-production-of-the-circulating-one-cent-coin

Who Pays for Knowledge in the Age of AI?(1)

I was talking the other day with a friend who works in the open-access space.(2) I was venting because, in a single week, I ran into the same problem from two sides of my trade—first as a consumer, then as a knowledge producer.

Earlier in the week, I needed to access a journal article for research. The only option was to pay $56 for a 10–20 page paper. Later that week, my co-authors and I discussed publishing our own article in an open-access journal. Open access usually means readers don’t pay the proverbial $56—but it meant we would need to pay the journal $2,500. Accessing quality knowledge isn’t cheap; the question is simply who pays, and when.

For those unfamiliar with how academics, journalists, and even some content creators earn a living, none of this is unusual. It’s baked into the modern knowledge economy. Authors are rarely paid directly per reader. Instead, visibility leads to citations, reputation, professional credibility, and—eventually—jobs or funding. Paywalls interrupt this pipeline. If fewer people read or cite an author’s work, their ideas circulate less, and their professional standing weakens.

Historically, this system has been tolerated because there were few alternatives to publishers, journals, and subscription platforms. Open-access initiatives emerged to address this by shifting costs from readers to universities, libraries, or grant holders. But decentralized open access now faces a new—and deeply centralized—competitor: AI.

AI as Interface, Not Just Access

AI doesn’t just offer free information. It offers free, fast, frictionless synthesis. And once people begin using AI as their primary interface for knowledge, they often stop returning to original sources altogether. If you can choose between reading a text or receiving a tailored summary in seconds which will most people choose?

At first glance, this seems like the logical next step toward democratized knowledge. But AI isn’t merely changing where people look for information. It is reshaping how people relate to knowledge itself.

As more users rely on AI, fewer engage directly with primary sources. Because AI systems cannot access most paywalled content, this shift further reduces the visibility of work that remains behind them. Over time, knowledge that cannot be ingested, summarized, or re-presented by AI risks becoming economically invisible. This pressures scholars and writers to move outside paywalls, but doing so does not guarantee that their work will be credited, protected, or economically viable.

As I discussed in a previous series on knowledge preservation during earlier Ages of Air, decentralized and cross-cultural knowledge-sharing preserved not only texts but the spirit of inquiry itself. Yet access alone does not solve the problem of automation and transformation.

Making work freely available—whether through open access or AI—does not ensure authors receive recognition. Most readers are now familiar with AI’s citation problems: reproducing copyrighted material, misattributing sources, or fabricating facts entirely. As astrologers Chris Brennan and Austin Coppock recently noted, false information becomes psychologically “sticky” because fact-checking requires time we feel we no longer have. Only subject-matter experts reliably notice errors—and they are no longer the primary audience.(3)

Compounding this, many scholars have discovered their paywalled articles or books appearing on open platforms without permission or compensation. Sometimes this is informal sharing; sometimes it is systematic ingestion. Large Language Models (LLMs) become more valuable the more data they absorb, creating incentives to acquire information first and sort out legality later.

A recent example illustrates the problem clearly. Anthropic was fined $1.5 billion for training Claude on pirated materials from “shadow libraries.”(4) That figure sounds enormous until you consider the company’s current valuation: $183 billion. Even though the datasets must be destroyed, the extracted patterns remain embedded in the model. As Eric Schmidt once put it, if your product succeeds, “you hire a bunch of lawyers to go clean the mess up,” because “if nobody uses your product, it doesn’t matter that you stole all the content.”(5) In other words, it’s cheaper to break the rules and pay later, because the system penalizes infringement only after profit—not if creators go uncompensated.

When I shared this frustration with my friend, they mentioned the Public Interest Corpus—a project aimed at helping libraries support the “responsible use” of collections for AI development. I emphasize ‘responsible’ because it captures the ethical weight of our current Plutonic–Aquarian moment.

While initiatives like PIC address access and governance, they miss a deeper problem: AI disrupts the economics of expertise not simply by storing information, but by changing human behavior. Users increasingly substitute engagement with original work for AI-mediated synthesis. Over time, attribution fades, authorship blurs, and intellectual labor becomes cheapened. So, blaming it on AI doesn’t quite cut it.

Knowledge from the Ether-net

When knowledge is sourced through AI, several things happen simultaneously. First, AI begins to feel like the source or a public commons—even when it isn’t. Because it blends multiple perspectives, attribution becomes opaque.

Second, users often fail to cite original authors even when sources are available. This goes beyond laziness and reflects a cognitive shortcut: the conversational format creates the illusion that understanding equals authorship. Knowledge acquisition quietly masquerades as knowledge generation. Users are cognitively seduced not by a customized bot in lingerie, but by their own brain’s desire to do less work.

Most consequentially, intellectual labor is diluted. Historically, ideas were traceable to individuals or lineages. AI shifts value away from originators and toward aggregated output—a hive-mind aesthetic that erodes the notion of intellectual ownership.

To be fair, human expertise is more than stored knowledge. It includes judgment, ethics, and lived experience, which are qualities machines don’t possess. But while the need for expertise remains, the market signals that once recognized it are weakening. Many people now feel like instant experts after a short AI interaction, echoing how WebMD reshaped perceptions of medical authority.

This behavioral shift—not AI itself—is the core threat.

We like to say people should read original sources, cite responsibly, and support creators. But we no longer live in an honesty-policy world. This mirrors the behavioral economics of supporting small businesses: when time and money are constrained, incentives dominate intentions.

And so, in this Age of Air, we find ourselves in a knowledge economy paradox: remain behind paywalls and lose relevance, or step outside them and risk losing ownership altogether.

History suggests this tension is not new. When the value of a resource diverges sharply from the systems designed to control it, people adapt. That is where Pluto in Aquarius and the emergence of parallel systems enters the story which we’ll begin to explore in Part Two.

Footnotes:

(1) (United States Mint, 2025)

References:

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Evans, B., & Pine, L. (2024). Introduction: Black Markets During the Second World War. Global Food History, 10(3), 267–270. https://doi.org/10.1080/20549547.2024.2400023

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